Council advances broad rewrite of home-occupation rules to tighten parking, storage and use limits

The West Haven City Council voted June 3 to advance a substantial revision of the city's home-occupation rules, adopting Ordinance 12-206 after staff presented changes intended to limit neighborhood impacts and close gaps in enforcement.

City staff said the rewrite responds to recurring cases where home-based businesses exceeded the intent of existing rules. "Several businesses are coming through that did not really fit what we would determine as a home occupation," Mr. Nielson told the council, explaining why the staff and planning commission prepared the ordinance.

Major changes in the adopted draft include:

- A clearer definition of business-related vehicles and a requirement that utility/work vehicles, marked business vehicles and trailers be parked behind the front plane of the home (garage or non-permeable surface) and not on the street.
- A limit of no more than two concurrent business-related visitor parking spaces at a residence.
- Special parking provisions for daycare and preschool drop-off and pick-up, allowing brief on-street parking (under 15 minutes) for those functions and requiring a pickup/drop-off plan with the application.
- A list of higher-impact uses that will not qualify as home occupations (catchall referencing uses permitted exclusively in commercial/industrial zones), plus an explicit prohibition on outdoor merchandise storage in residential yards.

Council members pressed staff on several enforcement and definition points, including how to classify equipment such as porta-potties or dumpsters and how to treat longtime home businesses if licensing lapses. Staff and council agreed staff would return with a clarified "clean" draft that tightens parking wording, refines definitions for equipment/outdoor storage, and outlines renewal/grandfathering procedures for existing conditional-use permits.

The council approved the changes by voice vote and instructed staff to bring back language edits addressing the questions raised during the discussion. Staff recommended removal of some high-impact home-occupation uses but the council approved the package with directions for clarification rather than sending it back to the planning commission for a full redo.